9/11/14: Year Thirteen in the 1400 Year War

I have written before about where I was 9/11/01 (here and here, for example), and won't repeat it.    Let's just take a brief look at the past thirteen years of our long war with Islam, yes, Islam.

Thirteen years after that horrid day, we are still under attack by Islam. We have had some great successes, no doubt. Nobody would have believed that the US could so quickly mount such an effective operation in Afghanistan; within eight weeks US-led forces had taken Kabul, and sent the Taliban and its AQ masters running for the hills and the Pakistani border. It was a brilliant and unprecedented victory which highlighted Usama bin Laden's ultimately fatal mistake in attacking the US homeland--when the right President was in office, that is.

I have noted before that Islam is a rotten house which holds hundreds of millions of unhappy souls within its walls. To defeat the Islamic Jihadis requires constant pressure, attack, counterattack. It is a strategy in someways similar to that advocated by George Kennan in his 1947 "X Article" which advocated constant pressure and resistance to Soviet expansionism as the way to force the USSR to collapse or to reform from within. The Islamists must be resisted and defeated constantly and wherever they attack in the hope that eventually forces within Islam will rise up against the Jihadis and that a process of enlightenment will take hold in that now brutal and totalitarian creed.

Let's repeat: The war with Islam did not begin September 11, 2001. It began some 1400 years ago and continues. That September 11 was just a reminder that we live in a world of Islamic war.

President Bush seemed to understand that we were in a long war. He made some tough and right decisions. The requirements, however, of political correctness and expediency forced him to make major errors. The first, was to tell Americans in the immediate wake of the 9/11 attacks to carry on as though nothing had happened--to go shopping. It was LBJ's "Guns and Butter" policy on steroids.  The second was to utter one of the stupidest and most consequential statements made by a major Western leader, to wit, "Islam is a religion of peace." Whoever wrote that line for the President completely misunderstood the nature of enemy we faced then and now and have for 1400 years. That utterance undermined and basically ruled out a true understanding of our enemy. The thinking that line represents prevented and prevents sensible immigration reforms, and sets the stage for the prancing and utterances of dangerous clowns such as CAIR. Islam is not a religion of peace; it is a totalitarian creed out to destroy us and our allies in the West. It is as though in the midst of WWII, we were to allow thousands upon thousands of Nazis to immigrate to the UK, the US, Canada, and Australia.  The Jihadi with his knife bloody from killing the unarmed is Islam and vice-versa.  The so-called "crazies," "radicals," "fringe," in fact, form the core of Islam. An almost unbroken record of 1400 years of mass murder, enslavement, and misery speak to the truth about Islam. This is not new.

This all leads to the abomination we now have as President. This man who came into office pooh-poohing the "war on terror" (Note: Another mistake: It should have been called the war against the Jihadis) and apologizing to the Muslim world, now finds himself facing a rampant Jihadi threat--one which his absurd policies have fostered. He discarded the victories in Afghanistan and Iraq (and don't forget that Saddam was a terrorist enabler), drew down our military forces, resisted efforts to make us energy independent, turned over Libya to the Jihadis, nearly did the same in Egypt, and almost got us into a war in Syria on behalf of the Jihadis. He now is our "leader" in the battle against ISIS/ISIL. Between rounds of golf, he first tells us that he has no strategy, then that we shouldn't worry because it is a manageable problem, and now he makes a dramatic speech last night announcing he plans to destroy ISIS/ISIL, but to do so in a very cautious way. He has declared a sort-of, semi-war on the very same people a few months ago he (and McCain) wanted us to help overthrow Syria's Assad (I noted at the time how quiet the Israelis were on proposals to overthrow Assad; they know what will replace him.)

Ok, got it. The best comment I have heard on this silly Obama speech was by one of my sons. He called me and said, "I would love to play chess against Obama. He tells you upfront what he's not going to do. He tells you he won't use his knights and queen. Why did he announce we won't use ground troops? Why tell them that? What if we have to use them?"

Obama also repeated the nonsense that Islam is not the issue. He even stated that ISIS/ISIL is not Islamic. Oh, yes they are, Mr. President. They are the very essence of modern Islam. When will the White House and the rest of our political and chattering classes realize that?

This is not the way to conduct the 1400 year war. But then, as I noted some time ago, "we are not at war, just under attack."